Hamilton County prosecutor

As Hamilton County prosecutor, Arthur M. Ney Jr. brought some of the county’s most high profile murderers in history to justice in the 1980s; and later served on the Hamilton County Common Pleas bench.

As Hamilton County works on the 2015 budget, Commissioner Greg Hartmann is floating an idea he thinks could save money. He'd like to combine the city and county prosecutor offices.

"The city prosecutor's office makes absolutely no sense to me," says Hartmann. "It's an obvious overlap. When I was a county prosecutor I walked into that courtroom on my first day in municipal court and there was another city prosecutor in the same courtroom prosecuting the same crimes that just happened to have been committed in the city limits."

Nine people have been indicted for illegally hanging banners March 4 at Procter & Gamble headquarters in downtown Cincinnati.

The Hamilton County Prosecutor's office says the nine, from Maryland, Washington DC, Illinois, California and New York, are charged with burglary and vandalism. If convicted of all charges, they face the possibility of 9 ½ years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

The cases of two more voters accused of casting ballots in Ohio while living in other states have been referred by the Hamilton County Board of Elections to the county prosecutor for investigation.

The two are Naomi Lewin, a former classical music host at radio station WGUC, who moved to New York City in 2009 and Timothy A. Merman, who owns a home in Edgewood, Ky., but has voted from a business address in the Cincinnati suburb of Fairfax.

A Cincinnati nun is being investigated for illegally casting an absentee ballot for another Sister of Charity who died before last November's election.

Sister Rose Marie Hewitt, a 78-year-old Sister of Charity, died Oct. 4 - the same day the Hamilton County Board of Elections mailed her absentee ballot and about 60,000 others to persons around the county who had requested them.